An oral history (i.e., a lot of short interviews) about Aaron Spelling. I had some very brief dealings with the man and the thing that impressed me the most was that while he was then the most successful of all producers in television, the thought never seemed to have entered his mind that he might be infallible or have some "magic touch" or anything close to that.

Over on Facebook, Skeeter Ullman sent me this message. Don't fault me for his punctuation…

so I wanted to ask about a laugh-in taping. how many were involved.obviously the joke wall and music numbers had the complete cast, but when taping blackouts did everyone hang around and how much time devoted to taping of a single blackout? that really fascinates me how they got that show togather wold love to find a mod world song from it

During that little period of my life when I was occasionally trespassing over at the NBC Studios in Burbank, I would occasionally drop in on Stage 3 where Laugh-In taped. They had no real studio audience but there were bleachers and anyone could come by and sit in them if they behaved themselves. Often, the NBC tour would wander through and if something interesting was being done, they'd stay for a while.

It was hit-or-miss. Sometimes, nothing would happen for a long stretch and sometimes, I'd catch them doing a batch of eleven blackouts, six of which might be in one show, two of which might wind up in another and three of which would never air. They were always taping stuff for different episodes and I believe one way they lured some big guest stars in to do quick cameos is by promising that the bits they did with the person would air in multiple programs, which meant multiple paychecks.

Another way: The Laugh-In folks kept a close eye on what else was taping in the building. At the time, there was a lot: Bob Hope specials, The Flip Wilson Show, The Dean Martin Show, Hollywood Squares, all sorts of other specials, Johnny Carson whenever he brought The Tonight Show out from New York for a few weeks, etc. If they found out that, say, Jack Lemmon was appearing with Carson next week, they'd go to Lemmon's agent and ask, "Hey, while he's on the premises, would he come by and do some bits for us?

Sometimes, they wouldn't ask in advance. They'd write some gags for a celebrity and then George Schlatter or someone would go visit the celeb in their Tonight Show dressing room and say, "Hey, you've got an hour before taping. Want to come over to our set and do some spots?"

In 1983, I was one of the writers on The Half-Hour Comedy Hour, a short-lived series that was darn near a Laugh-In clone in every way but ratings, produced by Chris Bearde, one of the main folks behind Laugh-In. Though the series was on ABC, we taped at NBC on the same stage Laugh-In had used, Stage 3, and we did the same thing, finding cameo guests in the corridors there. Once, game show host Bob Eubanks was taping Card Sharks Dream House across the hall in Stage 1 — the stage Mr. Carson used, though his show was in reruns that week. We wrote some Bob Eubanks lines and one of our producers went over and talked him into coming over between Card Sharks Dream House episodes and taping a few for us.

The following week when Johnny was back, one of his guests was Christopher Reeve. We wrote up some short blackouts for him and then our Exec Producer Dick Clark and I and one other writer went over to his dressing room to see if we could get him to come to Stage 3 and do a few of them. I hadn't written any of the jokes but Dick took me along because he was aware I was a comic book expert and figured that might give me some rapport with Mr. Reeve.

Christopher Reeve was about as nice and polite as human being as I've ever met. He read the jokes which all referenced Superman and then said he'd be glad to do anything we wanted as long as it wasn't about Superman. He was on with Johnny to promote a non-Superman film of his and was trying to remind the world that he was an actor who could do other things. He said it so graciously that you couldn't fault him…and he absolutely understood when Dick said that he didn't think it would work to have him on if he wasn't going to refer to Superman. (We weren't asking him to don the costume or even pretend to be Clark Kent, understand; just to appear as Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman.)

Laugh-In worked the same way and I'm sure they had similar turndowns. Most of the time though, these things were planned. Once, I snuck a peek at the taping schedule and saw an item: "5:00, Zsa Zsa Gabor cameos." It was 2 PM and I decided not to stick around for Zsa Zsa.

My observation was that no performers were on the stage or nearby unless they were in the bits being taped or waiting to be in the next one or two things on the schedule. I never saw Gary Owens there because he taped most of his spots in the morning so he was free to do his radio show and various voiceover gigs with the rest of the day. He'd sometimes go back to NBC after his afternoon radio broadcast so he could be in one of the "group" segments. Those seemed to mainly be done in the early evening.

There was no set time for how long it might take to tape a blackout — and they rarely did one at a time. I watched once as Ruth Buzzi and Arte Johnson did about twenty of the park bench spots. I think twelve or so had been written and they did each in 1-3 takes, then they ad-libbed a few more or some writer on the set would invent one on the spot. That whole segment probably took 40 minutes and then Ruth and Arte ran off to get changed while the crew taped some wild lines from Goldie or JoAnn or someone.

It was a very fun place to be at times (so was the set of our knock-off) but it was on-again, off-again, like a party that stops for twenty minutes at a time then resumes. The fast pace was in the editing room, not on the stage. On the stage, some of those things seemed to drag on forever but I still liked being there.

The Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles is about to host a new production of The Sound of Music directed by Jack O'Brien. It opens September 20 and runs through October 31.

I have two good seats for the September 29th performance at 8 PM. They're seats 4 and 5 in Row C in the orchestra. (Here's the seating chart.)  Alas, I have something else I have to do that evening and can't go. I would like to sell these to someone, preferably someone with a PayPal account.

The scalper sites are currently asking $180 each for seats in this row for this performance. With their service and delivery charges, two would run you $493.15. When I bought them, they were were $85.00 each and all the extra charges brought the total up to $187.00. I want $220.00 for the pair because that's what it'll cost me (or you) now to buy tickets in the same section for another date, though neither of us will get seats this good.

If you're interested, drop me a note.

[UPDATE: The tickets have been purchased.]

Rich Eisen mainly does sports interviews on TV but every so often, he chats with folks like Carl Reiner. Here he is interviewing a person who happens to actually be Carl Reiner…

DC Comics has announced that they've reached some sort of agreement or awareness or deal with the Bob Kane estate or — well, I don't know what it is — so that "Bill Finger will be receiving credit in the Warner Bros. television series Gotham beginning later this season, and in the forthcoming motion picture Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice."

This is a very good thing and I don't know anything more about it than what's in the press release. I'm guessing though that it isn't a deal with the Kane estate, which has always insisted that as per past agreements, Bob Kane be credited as the sole creator of Batman. Past DC execs have tried and failed to amend that because even Kane himself, not long before he died, admitted it was not right. I'm going to assume that DC has decided that they can give Finger some sort of credit that won't violate the Kane deal, and I hope they're also paying some kind of significant money to Finger's grandaughter, Athena.

Without getting too deep into this again, I occasionally mount a slight defense of what Mr. Kane did to his partner, Mr. Finger. It may not have been right but it was not unusual in those days for one guy to sign a strip and for all others who contributed — even if they did substantially more than the guy who got sole credit — to remain largely anonymous. Finger in his lifetime did loads of comic book work unconnected to Batman and Kane, and didn't get his name on 98% of that, either.

The credit, whenever it appears, should say "Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger." Since the press release doesn't promise that, I assume that's not what's happening here…but even partial credit in some areas is way more than no credit in any areas so some justice has been done. Some justice, as we all know, is a whole lot better than no justice.

We will continue to award the Bill Finger Award each year at Comic-Con International to writers who have received insufficient credit and/or rewards for their work…and some of us will continue to lament that Bob Kane did not put things right before he died. Batman would have.

The First Lady of Cartoon Voices, June Foray, celebrates her 98th birthday today — the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale and Granny (owner of Tweety and Sylvester) and Jokey Smurf and Magica DeSpell and Mrs. Cauldron (on The Garfield Show) and Cindy Lou Who and if I list them all, this post will run into her 99th birthday and maybe the big 100.

A few years ago, the late Earl Kress and I assisted June with the writing of her autobiography. Before we started, we figured we knew everything she'd done and boy, were we wrong! As we find out, not only did we not imagine the length and breadth of this lady's career, it turned out she didn't even grasp it. For close to three-fourths of a century, she was so busy working in cartoons (and radio and commercials and dubbing movies and…) that she couldn't track all she'd done.

I remember one day when she phoned me and said, "Mark, I just got a residual check for a Frank Sinatra movie called Dirty Dingus Magee! Was I in that?" Apparently, yes. I haven't seen it but June probably looped a couple of voices somewhere.

This is an amazing woman. For around four decades, she was the "workingest" voice actress, working at the top of a highly competitive field. (Do you have any idea how many people think they can do voices?) 5-6 days a week, she would work from morning 'til after dark going from session to session to session. Everyone wanted to hire her because she was the best at what she did.

It has been a pleasure and an honor to know her and to work with her. And it's a pleasure and an honor to wish her a happy birthday. I have some other things to say about her but I have to save something for her 99th birthday, her 100th birthday, her 101st…

I have not yet had the time to watch the four-hour American Experience profile of Walt Disney that debuted earlier this week. On my TiVo it sits.

Floyd Norman, however, has. Floyd is the first person who speaks in the documentary and he's one of the few "talking heads" interviewed specifically for it who actually worked with and knew Walt. Floyd thinks the portrait it paints is not of the Walt Disney he worked with and knew. Just what I was afraid of.

My pal Christine Pedi — who hosts show tunes on Sirius Radio and sings them on stages around the country — demonstrates her gift for mimickry by performing "The Witch's Rap" from Into the Woods. That's her fellow Sirius Broadway Jock Seth Rudetsky playin' the pianny…

David Letterman has his first post-Late Show gig. And if I gave you a hundred guesses, you'd never guess what it is. He's going to take over playing Flo in the Progressive Insurance commercials.

No, he isn't. But this strikes me as almost as unlikely.

Here are some more interesting takes on last night's G.O.P. debate…

Former George W. Bush speechwriter David "Axis of Evil" Frum thinks it was all about who showed the greatest ability to dominate the stage.

Over at the American Conservative site, Daniel Larison thinks that none of the candidates showed any grasp of foreign policy.

Jill LePore reminds us that most of what people say at debates is forgettable and wrong.

And John Dickerson thought the big winner of the night was Carly Fiorina. If pressed to name one, I'd agree but I don't believe she has much chance of being the nominee. Do we really think Americans will get behind someone with no track record in government? Some might — and I still think this is a slim chance — accept Donald Trump's success in business as a substitute. Ms. Fiorina's track record ain't anywhere near as good.

We continue to admire from afar (I've never met the man) the fine actor, George S. Irving who is still doing major acting roles around — though lately not on — Broadway at the age of 92. He will soon be doing them at the age of 93 and a year after that at the age of 94 and then 95 and so on.

Here's a link to a new profile of Mr. Irving. As it will tell you, he was first seen on The Great White Way in a little flop called Oklahoma! That was 72 years ago and he's scarcely been outta work since then.

The article does not mention the vast amount of work Irving has done over the years as a voice for animation and commercials. Since the sixties, he's been on about half the cartoon shows that recorded their voices in New York, including Underdog and Go Go Gophers, and he gave one of the great tour de force performances as the Heat Miser in the 1974 Rankin-Bass special, The Year Without a Santa Claus. He reprised the role in a 2008 sequel and sounded just as heat-miserly as he had in '74.

If you would like to see a few minutes of Mr. Irving doing what he does so well, here's a video of him re-creating one of his great moments on stage. This is one of my ten-or-so favorites of the hundreds of videos I've linked to on this site. He's really a superb performer. (Keep in mind as you watch it that Irving was a much younger man at the time. He was 90.)

Fred Kaplan thinks that very little of what the Republican candidates said tonight about foreign policy made any sense. I'm not sure it was supposed to in terms of what to actually do if one is elected. It probably made some sense in terms of exciting Republican base voters and big donors.

Jonathan Chait pretty much summarized my feelings about it all though I do think that Trump's act is starting to wear thin. It's becoming more and more obvious that he has no answers to a lot of the big questions; just bluster and a talent for changing the subject. I don't think he's about to plunge in the polls, partly because there's plenty of time to let The Donald Trump Show rage on and partly because none of the alternatives look that appealing. But I just got the feeling tonight that a lot of his supporters are starting to wonder.

…but I'm actually watching a half-dozen websites that are live-blogging it. My favorite comment so far came from Albert Brooks on Twitter…

My problem with this debate — with all these debates; I'm sure there'll be some of this in the Democratic ones — is that all these candidates not only have their own set of views but their own sets of facts that support them. A real-time fact-checker would go crazy trying to clarify or correct. Can a person be "pro-life" and yet believe that much of what is being claimed about Planned Parenthood is untrue? Guess not. That would show weakness, not fairness.

Tomorrow, Politifact and other such sites will list dozens of factual assertions that were just plain wrong. And not one person who has a favorite candidate will think less of their guy (or gal) or the position because of that.

If you saw the Sunday Cartoon Voices Panel at Comic-Con this year in San Diego, you were dazzled by voice actress Misty Lee. Well, actually, you were dazzled by all six performers who were up there but this item is about Misty. She's not only a busy vocal performer, she's also a terrific magician — and she and her husband Paul are two of my best friends. Here's an article about her career in magic…and though I have a few quibbles with it, they're sure right that she deserves serious attention.

Here's what Jon Stewart's doing these days. He's in Washington, urging Congress to do the right thing for First Responders (and I suppose, Second Responders and Third Responders and so on) from 9/11. It's appalling that this is even an issue…